Right, i think it’s an important step to be able to distance yourself from your own personality and decide by objective facts. Not completely possible, but it is to a point.
I have a good friend who was a F-104 and Tornado pilot, but when he flies the A340-600 today – he is a different person and will do anything to avoid risk.
Peter, I disagree.
a) I do not think it’s representative for private pilots to weather brief by looking at the sky and counting clouds. Anyone holding a PPL has been educated to interpret weather information such as METARS, TAFS and more. There is no fault in PPL training here. While not everyone may have a deep understanding of weather and weather information sources like some do (here), I doubt there’s many pilots who know nothing about METAR and TAF for a basic brief.
b) Regardless, it’s not only about weather and, for that matter, technical data. Flying out of gliding distance for a period X over water/mountains/fog/cloud/cities/during night/… in single is a matter of personal risk appetite. Period. What else would it be? How does education help if you have an engine failure over an area of fog? The decision whether you do it or not is guided by your willingness to accept the risk of near certain death if the engine quits.
I actually know a couple if private pilots who know next to nothing about airplanes, navigation, weather, you name it. The standard among a certain group of pilots is incredibly wrong, but depending in what ecosystem you live in you might never meet those.
From my couple of years where i did BFRs as a CRI for local pilots i remember that it surprised me many times how little knowledge many pilots have. There’s MANY who have never learned to read a METAR or TAF, who cannot do the radio procedures the right way – and almost every time i have flown in the last 22 years i have heard at least one guy who cannot do a proper position report and cannot tell “right base” from “base”.
What can you expect from pilots who did their PPL in the Seventies, never did any additional training and who fly 15 hours every year? I am not judging those people, but i know they exist.
Just to steer the Bakersfield Piper accident back on track… http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2015/12/piper-pa-32rt-300t-turbo-lance-ii.html
1. the crash in the central valley near Bakersfield, CA. 4pm PST – no icing conditions. The flight was enroute from San Jose, CA (silicon valley) to Henderson, NV (south of Las Vegas).
2. the Piper crash is not fully investigated yet and there are not enough details to assess fault or make assumptions about what happened
3. it is not clear if the Piper PIC was instrument rated and flying on an instrument flight plan
Flying down the middle of the California central valley is prudent when headed toward Las Vegas area. There are two major hiways and an airport about every 30nm. Weather can be checked via AWOS at regular intervales along this flight path. Not clear if the PIC took advantage of that, or contacted flight watch to get weather enroute or had flight following but the flightpath would have been in easy radio range for all of it.
Some of what you write is wrong.
It is clear that the pilot was not IFR rated, and there were icing conditions in the whole area. You can even hear pilot reports about icing on the ATC tape. The pilot tried to climb on top and when ATC told him about the tops beeing around 21.000 ft he asked ATC about the base of the clouds, obviously in an attempt to descend below. He was then offered an IFR clearance, accepted it and the next thing he did was turn north instead flying the course ATC gave him. By that time he sounds confused, and obviously a short time later he lost control.
To a degree I think this has to do with the type of flying one is used to and the environment one normally flies in. For example, I learned to fly in the L.A. area and thus flew over a huge city, mountains and deserts from day one. Perfectly normal to me, probably not so much to someone who is used to seeing green fields which are all perfectly landable (e.g. the UK, France) all the time.
One of my favorite aviation sayings is ‘hoping and praying should never be confused with preparing and planning’
Aviation is all about risk management and risk mitigation. Always having a plan B is a good start, but that plan B has to be sufficiently different from plan A as to be viable.
Let me offer my risk assessment on a recent long VFR flight from southern Colorado to L.A.
So, first thing I did was to eliminate as much pressure as possible:
- booked the airplane for one half day longer than needed
- told my pax not to make any appointments for the ‘overflow’ day and to expect an overnight somewhere en route
Next, I had the a/c fueled to the gunwales on arrival, so no time was going to be lost on departure.
Next up was a slightly tricky decision:
a) fly full chat into the headwinds
b) throttle back to long-range cruise and fly the trip in one go
Let’s look at these scenarios:
a) Fuel stop. This adds one hour – at least – to the trip. Which would have meant arriving into the L.A. area after nightfall and having to cross the mountain ranges to the east of L.A. in darkness. Not something I fancy doing with possible mountain obscuration forecast
b) fly low and slow. This would mean a pretty long flight, but would get us across the Mojave desert and to the eastern slopes of the ranges in last daylight. There are plenty of airports in the area for an overnight stop.
I opted for b) and it turned out exactly as forecast. Arrived at the ranges in daylight, made the crossing and landed – by now at night – after 6.1 hours with 15 USG in the tanks.
Had the mountains been completely socked in (along my original route they were, but further west, where I had to go anywhere, they were not), I would have landed, stayed the night and made the short hop across the next day. Same if the headwinds (which were very strong, up to 60kts in parts) had been even more severe.
Of course got wx updates along the way, so had a pretty good idea what to expect.
I agree with Patrick and think, that many pilots simply don’t waste much time in making that clear to themself. You basically rely on that (single) engine. That’s what you also do in different other phases of flight. I don’t like it either and at least stopped flying at night in piston singles, although I would do it in a SET, a twin or a Cirrus, because risk is much smaller.
Regardless, it’s not only about weather and, for that matter, technical data. Flying out of gliding distance for a period X over water/mountains/fog/cloud/cities/during night/… in single is a matter of personal risk appetite. Period. What else would it be? How does education help if you have an engine failure over an area of fog? The decision whether you do it or not is guided by your willingness to accept the risk of near certain death if the engine quits.
Sure, these are “second order” factors and some people will be happy crossing mountains and some not. But that discussion gets more detailed; for example I am happy to cross the Alps at FL180, ~8000ft above the average terrain and most of the time within glide of some flat bottomed valley. Above an overcast, I run a GPS running a proper topo map.
Above water, I carry a life raft. That actually lives in the plane permanently.
Night flight is a problem because it’s a Russian Roulette situation. For me, this is resolved by my base being generally closed after dark anyway, and my strong preference to do any substantial flights in the morning because the wx is usually much better.
So there is a hopefully viable Plan B, most of the time
Sometimes there cannot be. Then one has to consciously confine the risk to small time windows, etc.
For example there are many departures and arrivals where an engine stoppage would land you in a house. These are very narrow time windows, and statistics show that these incidents are extremely rare.
Then there is the whole business of flight in IMC. This is emotionally hard to accept for many, but it works because almost nobody flies in IMC. For example the UK has not had any IMC mid-airs since around WW2.
And having a Plan B can take different forms. It could be a second engine, or a chute (not sure I would just pull a chute above some mountain peaks!).
A SET doesn’t give you a Plan B. It just makes an engine stoppage a lot less likely. But piston total engine stoppages are very rare… well unless it is something like fuel servo icing which will happen every time in the right conditions 
I just don’t like the references to “personality” 
I quite like being boring and paying attention to boring detail. It’s a very bad policy for pulling girls (they generally want the exact opposite ) but it’s a good policy for survival. And as I said there is a very good reason why commercial aviation does it’s best to eliminate personality factors.
Here is a very, very short “personality” test of only 2 questions. Don’t laugh. It is not complete, but it is only there for illustration purpose and to let you explore into the subject of personality differences. Short 2 question test: http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=test-quiz_1422
Some people are motivated by fun. They are the women with the coloured hair, the dreadlocks, the shiny jewelry, glitter. When you talk to them, they are talking in terms like “Cool stuff. Oh … that is fun”. Fun is an important motivator to them. For them rules are there to be broken. They love parties and love taking risks. Think about the guy racing his motorcycle on his back wheel only through the streets. They are often the drop outs from school and university.
Other people are world changers. They want to change the world into a better one. They often wear natural clothes, speak softly. If you give them a hand, it is a soft touch and not a firm grip. They are risk averse by nature.They hate to confront.
There are also people that are very competitive in nature. They only accept to win a game and go for 1st position/price, not just to participate. They often drive the fancy cars, wear high quality clothes (othen black in colour) and are driven by a challenge and money. They have no problem taking risks. Often, they are not team players as other team members only hinder them from reaching their goals, they think.
Finally there is a group of people that is driven by “a return on investment” mind. They are the people that work with structure, keep Excel sheets. They are often not the most fashionable and often speak with a repetitive, monotone tone. They do take risks, but only calculated risks and they do calculate first. They keep the law and rules are there for everyone to keep. They have a tendency to think black-white.
There are loads of personality tests and the above cannot even be called a test. The idea is that we are all wired differently inside and intrinsically movitated in a different way. With that also comes a completely different view on risk, laws, rules, etc. You can’t say that one personality is better than another one as we need all of them.
If you know what kind of personality you have, you can become more aware of the risks involved with your specific personality type.
I don’t think we can compare the airliners and their crews to our kind of flying. We did not go through the selection process to fly for an airline. We often fly alone as well and are not part of the flightcrew of 2 or more in the cockpit. I do think that most private pilots found on forums like this one are primarily of a certain type of personality.
Here is a very, very short “personality” test of only 2 questions. Don’t laugh. It is not complete, but it is only there for illustration purpose and to let you explore into the subject of personality differences. Short 2 question test: http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=test-quiz_1422
I cannot answer those questions because none of the options apply to me
BTW there are almost as many personality tests as there are people willing to write books on the topic. I went on a course some years ago on personality scoring, for the purpose of staff recruitment. It was quite amusing and would have been useful in a narrow context in a big company. For example I once knew a girl who used to work for a big promotions company – basically a call centre with about 500 pushy people. Mostly girls. All 500 had been recruited for the “cheerleader” profile (cheerleader is a common category in scoring models e.g. here and it’s meaning is obvious – a positive, happy and care-free airhead) and apparently it was a great place to work, with everyone getting on well, lots of affairs in the office, etc. Periodically, management (another character profile) had to pick up the pieces and sort out the mess left behind by the cheerleader types.
I don’t think we can compare the airliners and their crews to our kind of flying. We did not go through the selection process to fly for an airline. We often fly alone as well and are not part of the flightcrew of 2 or more in the cockpit.
That’s true as a fact but it doesn’t mean that some of the main methods cannot be adopted. Obviously we can do nothing about having one engine and no de-ice (for example) but we can use checklists when appropriate, learn about wx and where to find it, etc. All good EuroGA stuff
I do think that most private pilots found on forums like this one are primarily of a certain type of personality.
I actually think there is a mixture here. I have met many here personally and they are very varied. The really ebullient Type As are not common, especially at the IR level. But also I know that many are put off posting (and some have left altogether) because of some personality types being prominent. Also some pretty objectionable types have left, which is a good thing.
The fatal accidents one reads about mostly involve severe weather or a lack of preflight preparation, and mostly involve pilots who were appallingly short of basic weather knowledge, so that is where I would start if I wanted to reduce the major accidents. If you could magically change our 1950s engines to have a 1M hr MTBF, it would make almost no difference.
